A factory in Brazil will be manufacturing iPads. To add to this surprise, they will be shipped in Brazil starting in December of this year. Mercadante explained that despite all the doubts, the new iPad factory will be making the gadgets for the first time outside of Chinese territory.

The Style-iT stylus from the folks at Bracketron is a "dual function" stylus in that one end is designed to poke at your iPad (or other capacitive touchscreen device), while the other end is a conventional ballpoint pen. That way, you can scribble on both your virtual notepad and your actual paper one using the same product.

We're hearing that internal testing at HP led to the loading of webOS onto an Apple iPad and, well, it blew the TouchPad out of the water. The precise details are quite scarce, but we're hearing that webOS ran "twice as fast" on the Apple iPad hardware than it did on the HP TouchPad. This leads us to believe that it's the hardware, and not the software, that led to the ultimate demise of webOS at HP.

Well, that's mildly passive aggressive of Steve Jobs, don't you think? By now, you've surely heard about all the patent infringement lawsuits that Apple has launched against companies like Samsung, but it looks like the real target isn't these manufacturers at all: it's Google.

People are saying an Amazon-branded tablet device is being geared for October. The irony is that Amazon could very well go with Android for its tablet... considering Google just stepped into its turf with the Story HD and, even before that, the rise of Google Books.

With the next iPad, it's reasonable to expect a higher resolution screen and a more powerful processor, but it's possible that we could be getting a hefty dose of augmented reality when it comes to the next-gen tablet too. Apple recently filed a few patents and they seem to outline at least two interesting propositions.

Let's face it. The "entertainment" system that you find on most airplanes offers a terrible interface that is remarkably sluggish. Even if there are free video games, they're still pretty crappy. By contrast, tablet devices are much peppier, much prettier, and much more fun. So, American Airlines is offering tablets to its passengers.

What do you do when you're competing with over 200,000 other applications, fighting for the attention of the even shorter attention span-wielding smartphone user? You give them a reason to pay attention to you... until Apple says that you can't do that.

If you are a graphic designer you know Wacom, they come from a long tradition of providing an industry standard tablet. And then there are instances where you may want a stylus for your iPad, enter the Wacom Bamboo Stylus.

Many expected the original iPad to be released with the features the iPad 2 finally came out with, though it took Apple nearly a year after to bring that seemingly basic feature –- a camera -- to reality. But those critical of Apple for their slow moving product releases need to keep one thing in mind, it’s all about the money. Apple, alongside millions of developers single handedly kick started a $2B industry that barely existed before; the tablet computing market.

It's kind of funny, really, how Apple chooses to price its products. For instance, the black MacBook for a time came at a $100 premium over the white one, making it the more premium offering. The reverse seems to be happening on the mobile front, as people have been anxiously awaiting a true white iPhone 4. That day has not come yet, but you could be getting another white touchscreen device.

Remember those early rumors that came out late last month about the Motorola XOOM price? Turns out those rumors were bang on. It has now been confirmed that the Honeycomb-powered tablet is indeed going to be priced at $799 unsubsidized through Verizon Wireless.